Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Dr. Ahmad Bahar called on the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon not to respond to the Israeli severe pressure which aims not to blacklist the Israeli army. Dr. Ahmad Bahar hailed the recommendation, on children affairs in conflict areas, issued by Laila Zrouqi, the representative of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The recommendation was for blacklisting the Israeli army due to its deliberate harming of Palestinian children in its last summer’s aggression on Gaza Strip.

In a statement on Thursday, Bahar said Zrouqi’s recommendation goes in line with the provisions of the international humanitarian law as well as the humanitarian values and moral principles.

He pointed out that special efforts of the UN, UN Security Council and other international organizations must be exerted to blacklist the Israeli government, army and security institutions for threatening international peace and security and committing war crimes against humanity.

The PLC Deputy Speaker Bahar urged the UN to enforce all the UN and UNSC’ resolutions which convict the Israeli occupation and its criminal and racist policies and plans over the Palestinian land.

Bahar also called on other international organizations and institutions to exert efforts for prosecuting the Israeli government and it army before competent international courts.

The UN special representative for children and armed conflict Ms. Leila Zerrougui has recommended to blacklist Israeli army along with terror organizations which are involved in war crimes against children, Israeli media reports said Thursday.

Yediot Aharanot newspaper revealed that the UN blacklist to be issued in the coming days includes al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Islamic State, in addition to a number of terrorist organizations.

The recommendation was based on a report confirming Israel’s involvement in killing more than 500 Palestinian children and the injury of 3300 others during its summer aggression on Gaza.

"The Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon tends to reject the recommendation due to the Israeli continued pressures and threats," according to the newspaper.

The newspaper also pointed out that pro-Palestinian human rights institutions are exerting pressures for their parts to pass the recommendation.

UN senior officials have also called on Ki-moon to ignore Israeli pressures and to blacklist Israeli army, the sources added. UN envoys wants IDF on blacklist with Islamic StateIsrael pressuring UN chief Ban not to include it in list - which also includes al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban - of organizations or countries that regularly cause harm to children.The UN secretary-general's envoy for Children and Armed Conflict recommended this week to include the IDF on a blacklist of countries and organizations accused of regularly causing harm to children.The blacklist includes terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and Taliban, as well as African countries such as the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and others. The list will be released soon as an appendix to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special report on the subject of children and armed conflict.Ban is leaning towards not including the IDF on the list after facing massive pressure from Israel, which warned him that such a move will have far-reaching repercussions on Israel-UN relations. On the other hand, the UN is also facing heavy pressure from the Palestinians, their supporters and human rights organizations to include the Israeli army on the list. Palestinians also benefit from the support of senior officials in the UN Secretariat, who are urging Ban not to give in to Israeli pressure. A senior UN official even claimed in a letter to Ban that Israeli representatives threatened her and her friends so that the IDF is not included on the list.While the IDF is currently not on the list, Israeli officials said that "we won't rest easy until the last minute." The secretary-general is supposed to come to a final decision on the matter in the next few days. The envoy's draft report includes sharp criticism of Israel's treatment of children and mentions the fact that, according to UN figures, more than 500 children were killed and 3,300 were wounded during Operation Protective Edge last summer. Israel sent its notes on the report, some of which were accepted with some of the wording softened. However, Israel's main concern was precisely the appendix - the same blacklist of "leprous countries and organizations" - which could open the door to demands for sanctions against Israel.Those leading the fight to prevent the inclusion of Israel on the list are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Foreign Ministry, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the IDF, and Israel's Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor. Last week, the Foreign Ministry held a briefing for dozens of diplomats from many countries together with the IDF and the Justice Ministry to describe the steps taken by the army to protect Israel during an armed conflict. "We are continuing our efforts to persuade the secretary-general not to include Israel on the list," a senior Foreign Ministry official said. "Israel-haters are threatening the United Nations and no one is complaining about them. It's a scandal and it's hypocrisy. There are unfortunately a lot of situations in which children are killed in zones of conflict and yet no one dares put them on the list. Do you know how many kids the Saudis have killed while bombing Yemen? I want to see the UN secretary-general's Algerian envoy dare to include Saudi Arabia on the list." Netanyahu raised the issue of the list during his meeting on Wednesday with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is visiting Israel and about to announce his candidacy in the 2016 US presidential election. Graham, who is considered a friend of Israel, told a news conference in Jerusalem, "There’s a report that may come out any day now where the United Nations is considering the State of Israel in the same category as Boko Haram when it comes to crimes against children,” he said. “If that ever happened, if the United Nations embraced a report putting the State of Israel in the same categories with terrorist organizations in terms of the way they treat innocent people, particularly children, that would be an outrage that would not go unanswered." Graham warned that if the UN continues to be hostile towards Israel, it risks a confrontation with the US Congress and the suspension of American aid, which amounts to one quarter of the UN's budget.

Theodor Meron, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser, warned the government in 1968 that demolishing Palestinian homes was a violation of international humanitarian laws

A senior Israeli government official warned as early as in 1968 that punitive demolitions and deportations of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) constitute violations of international humanitarian law. Theodor Meron, then Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser, sent his opinion to the Israeli prime minister's office in a memo marked "Top Secret". The memo was discovered and made public last week by an organisation investigating the archives for relevant material on human rights. According to the memo, Meron – like almost all contemporary jurists and legal scholars – said the punitive home demolitions and deportations violated the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in war. Any other argument was just unsubstantiated hasbara. According to author Gershom Gorenberg, writing in Haaretz: "The discovery of Meron's memo on demolitions and deportations is additional evidence that the regime under which the West Bank is governed began in deception and has been maintained by self-deception – by the government, by the hasbara machine and sometimes by our Supreme Court." In 2006, another memo of Meron's was revealed, in which, just three months after Israel's rule over the OPT began in 1967, he stated that "civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." The Israeli government at the time, and every one since, ignored this consensus position. Meron is currently president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.Israel knew all along that settlements, home demolitions were illegalNew evidence shows government's adviser on international law said in 1968 that demolishing terror suspects' homes violates Geneva Convention.

It was March 1968. Yaakov Herzog, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, received a memo marked "Top Secret" from the Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, Theodor Meron. As the government's authority on international law, Meron was responding to questions put to him about the legality of demolishing the homes of terror suspects in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and of deporting residents on security grounds. His answer: Both measures violated the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in war. The government's justifications of the measures – that they were permitted under British emergency regulations still in force, or that the West Bank wasn't occupied territory – might have value for hasbara, public diplomacy, but were legally unconvincing. The legal adviser's stance in 1968 is important today precisely because it is unexceptional. It's the view of nearly all scholars of international law, including prominent Israeli experts. The memo shows that from the very start of the occupation, central figures in the Israeli government knew that deportations and demolitions violated Israel's international commitments, and not just in the eyes of outside critics. Yet both measures have been used ever since. If any later Israeli leaders saw Meron's opinion, they ignored it, and so misled the public and Israel's supporters abroad about the legality of their policies. If later leaders did not see the document, they nonetheless engaged in deliberate naivete, convincing themselves of the hasbara line in the face of the evidence. Meron's memo was discovered in Yaakov Herzog's office files in the State Archives by Akevot, a new organization that has taken on the important task of searching archives for material shedding light on human rights issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Herzog, by the way, was the uncle of the current Zionist Union leader, Isaac Herzog.) Last week, it made the document public. (You can see the original Hebrew document here[PDF]; English translation here [PDF].) The memo is not the first evidence of Meron's warnings, though. In 2006, I published another of his legal opinions, which I found in the late Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's declassified office files. Written in mid-September of 1967, about three months after the Six-Day War, it responds to a query from Eshkol's bureau about the legality of establishing settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. He answered, "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." Central figures in Israel’s government at the time – Eshkol, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira – all received that legal advice. A week and a half later, the cabinet approved settlement in the West Bank for the first time. Ex post facto, a few scholars have manufactured the justifications for settlement that are regularly cited for hasbara purposes. But their legal gymnastics have never convinced anyone who was not trying hard to be convinced. About Theodor Meron: Born in Poland, he spent his early teens in a Nazi labor camp. After he arrived in Palestine, he made up for his lost school years, then completed a law degree at Hebrew University, a doctorate at Harvard and a fellowship at Cambridge, both in international law. Then he joined Israel's foreign service. A decade after writing the legal opinions described here, he returned to academia to teach international law at New York University. In 2001, as a U.S. citizen, he was appointed a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Today he is president of that court and one of the world's leading authorities on humanitarian law in war. After his 1967 opinion on settlement became public, he told The Independent that he "would have given the same opinion today." The reason is clear from his 1968 opinion on demolitions, in which he dismissed "narrow, literal" interpretations of the Geneva Convention. The convention, he said, "is a humanitarian convention that aims to protect the rights of a civilian population." Put differently, the convention can't be interpreted by splitting hairs and forgetting real human beings. Its point isn't to protect states. It is to protect people from a state whose army has conquered the land where they live and before whose power they are otherwise defenseless. If it is ignored, their basic rights will be trampled. The discovery of Meron's memo on demolitions and deportations is additional evidence that the regime under which the West Bank is governed began in deception and has been maintained by self-deception – by the government, by the hasbara machine and sometimes by our Supreme Court. That memo has already been submitted to Israel’s High Court of Justice by the Center for the Defence of the Individual and other human rights groups, in support of their request that an expanded panel of justices hear their challenge to the policy of demolitions. The court should accept that request, which gives it a chance to end the deception and put a stop to an unjust policy – one that should have ceased the day the memo reached the Prime Minister's Office 37 years ago. Gershom Gorenberg is the author of "The Unmaking of Israel" and "The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977." Follow him on Twitter: @GershomG.

A Palestinian child runs past a water tank that was destroyed during the 50-day Israeli war on the Gaza Strip last summer, on March 26, 2015

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called on the international community to rev up measures for the reconstruction of the besieged Gaza Strip and to boost economy in the blockaded Palestinian territory as well as the occupied West Bank.In a report released on Tuesday, the IMF evaluated the reconstruction process in the Gaza Strip, which suffered a deadly Israeli onslaught last summer, saying that the rebuilding process "is moving far more slowly than expected."The Washington-based crisis lender, in the report, highlighted the colossal size of destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip because of the Israeli aggression, estimating the economic cost of the 50-day Israeli war on the blockaded territory at USD 4 billion."While notable progress has been made recently with the provision of materials for the repair of individual homes, larger construction projects that are required for a job-creating economic recovery are still pending," the report appraised.

Palestinian children play amidst the debris of houses destroyed during the 50-day Israeli war last summer, in the town of Beit Hanun, the Gaza Strip, March 13, 2015

The IMF further noted that the economy in the two Palestinian territories was hit by a recession in the year 2014, describing the economic outlook for the areas as "highly uncertain." ​The report also listed Israel’s blocking of tax revenues for the Palestinians as one of the moves further straining the economy in the Palestinian territories.In January, Israel blocked over USD 100 million in tax revenues after the Palestinian Authority applied to join the International Criminal Court. The IMF, which has projected the economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at 2.5 percent and 7.0 percent respectively, says Palestinian authorities alone cannot recover the economy in the territories, urging “additional donor aid” to “fully close the financing gap” there.Israel heavily pounded the blockaded coastal sliver in the recent war that started on July 8 and ended on August 26 with an Egyptian-brokered truce. Over 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, were killed in the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. Around 11,000 others were injured.Israeli forces targeted hundreds of factories and businesses over the course of the 50-day assault. The IMF had said in another report that the war caused the Palestinian economy to contract by about 15 percent.Palestinians face various forms of Israeli aggression nearly every day, including the heavy-handed suppression of protests in the occupied West Bank and deadly aerial attacks in the Gaza Strip.

The Euromid Observer held a media conference, on Wednesday, highlighting the consequences of economic siege on Gaza which has now lasted eight years. A United Nations (UN) envoy warned about Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying that the Israeli move is a major causes of instability in the Middle East.

"It has been nine months since Israel agreed to a ceasefire that ended its third and most massive military offensive against the 1.8 million residents of the Gaza Strip. However, despite promises by Israel to loosen its nine-year blockade, by Egypt to facilitate further negotiations and by the international community to fund the massive reconstruction needed, none of those promises have been kept," the Euromid Observer stated, according to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency.

The report stated that the Israeli army continues to regularly shoot at fishermen, or confiscate their boats, when they merely are trying to make a living. In April alone, 15 shooting incidents, including one that ended in injury and property damage, were documented.

The report estimated the cost of relief, recovery and reconstruction due to last summer’s war is $4 billion, and international donors pledged $3.5 billion for Gaza’s reconstruction, but only $954 million had been disbursed as of early April.

"It's not surprising, then, UNRWA has suspended its cash-assistance program for repairs and rent due to lack of funds, and that the Israeli organization Gisha reports that of the 5 million tons of construction materials required, only 9 percent of that total has actually entered Gaza," Euromid commented.

The observer blamed Egypt, who has joined Israel as Gaza’s jailers, pointing to the 2014 annual statistics of the Gaza Interior Ministry that reported that Rafah crossing was closed for 66 percent of the time. That trend has continued. On April 19, the ministry noted that the Rafah crossing had been closed for 100 days since the beginning of 2015, marking the longest closure since 2009.

"The consequences are predictable. Unemployment has soared to 43 percent, and according to the International Monetary Fund, the Strip’s gross domestic product plunged 24 percent in the third quarter of 2014. This, is an economy that already was on life support," Euromid added.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor concluded the report with urgent calls on the international community force Israel to end its blockade in addition to other demands for help the steadfastness Palestinians.

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World Bulletin further reports, via Al Ray, that UN Special Coordinator for the so-called "Middle East Peace Process", Nickolay Mladenov, raised concerns about the illegal settlement activities by the Israeli regime in the occupied West Bank including East al-Quds (Jerusalem) during a session of the UN Security Council, on Tuesday.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem), in 1967.

The UN envoy said that the 15-member council must have “no illusions about the impact of these unilateral actions” by Israel on destabilizing the situation in the occupied territories and in the whole region.

The UN envoy warned about the repercussions of the continuation of tensions in the Palestinian territories, saying the conflict should be settled in order to avoid instability in the region.

“This hard-earned belief in peace and negotiations must not be allowed to wither away,” he demanded, referring to efforts to establish peace in the Palestinian territories through negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

He warned that failure to establish peace in the occupied territories "can further destabilize the Middle East for decades.”

He further referred to the Israeli onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip and the continuation of the Israeli blockade on the territory as one of the developments harming peace and security in the region. On July 7, 2014, Israel launched a 50-day war on Gaza, in which over 2,130 Palestinians lost their lives and some 11,000 others were injured.

About 1,500 buildings and structures were also demolished during the Israeli offensive. Many Gazans remain homeless as a result of the war.

“No one can remain untouched by the scale of devastation, the slow pace of reconstruction, and the vast needs to rebuild lives and livelihoods” in the besieged Gaza Strip, Mladenov said, stressing that people in the blockaded area remain “desperate and angry” at the isolation imposed by the ongoing blockade on the territory, at the closure of the Rafah border crossing, and with donors for “not honouring their financial commitments for reconstruction.”

“There is a clear moral and humanitarian imperative not just for the United Nations and the international community, but primarily for the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to prevent the implosion of Gaza,” he stressed.

Mladenov further referred to the large number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the spillover of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon, calling on the international community to increase and expedite support for Lebanon. Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since March 2011.

Mladenov concluded that the growing tensions and “a vicious tide of terror and extremism” in the Middle East indicate that “peace cannot be achieved through violence, but at the negotiating table.”

He further warned about the dire consequences of unabated conflicts in the region, saying that the UN should step up efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-prisoners’ Committee, in cooperation with Jordanian human rights institutions, have started preparations for an international conference on prisoners, set to kick off in September in the Jordanian Capital, Amman.

Head of the Prisoners and Ex-prisoners’ Committee, Issa Qaraqe, said the conference falls in line with the legal battle initiated by the Palestinian leadership, nationwide and overseas, after Palestinian’s accession to the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Experts in international law, former judges, and prominent political and parliamentary figures are expected to join the conference, Qaraqe added.

He said the Israeli government, most notoriously Netanyahu’s, have reneged, both legally and ethically, on their allotted responsibilities as regards Palestinian and Arab detainees locked-up at Israeli jails.

“The Israeli occupation has not only been violating international laws and provisions regarding the prisoners’ cause but has also devised racist and chauvinistic laws that have infringed prisoners’ rights and obstructed all peace initiatives in the region.”

Qaraqe spoke out against Israel’s persecution of Palestinian and Arab detainees, warning of an explosion to rock the region over the prisoners’ cause.

The Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad Al-Maliki on Monday said that he asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to set a date for submitting the case files pertaining to the settlements and war crimes lawsuits against Israel to the court."I filed a request two days ago to the ICC to set a date so we can submit the case files of the settlements and Israel's war crime lawsuits," al-Maliki told Palestinian radio, according to videonews.us."We're waiting for a date to be scheduled, and it might be in the middle of next month," al-Maliki said, adding that he "will head to The Hague for this [submitting the case files] once a date is set".On April 1st, Palestine officially joined the ICC after The Hague-based tribunal approved its accession bid.In January, Palestinians formally delivered the UN papers ratifying the Rome Statute – the legal document establishing the court – with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acting as "depository."The move came after an Arab draft resolution at the UN General Assembly seeking a deadline for ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories failed to win the nine votes needed to pass.Shortly later, Abbas applied for Palestinian membership in 18 international treaties, including the Rome Statute.The ICC was established in 1998 as a court of last resort to prosecute the most heinous offenses – such as war crimes and crimes against humanity – in cases where national court systems had failed.

Mehmet Görmez, president of Turkey's Presidency of Religious Affairs, was in the Gaza Strip on Sunday where he said that Israel has used internationally banned weapons and violated religious and human rights against the Palestinians, Al Sabah newspaper reported. Görmez was in Gaza at the invitation of Palestinian Minister of Religious Affairs Yusuf Ismail al-Sheikh. The cleric said Israel must be prosecuted for its violations. Görmez also met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to the report. Haniyeh praised Turkey's assistance to the Palestinians, saying it was an indication of the reliable and sacred bond with Turkey, Al Sabah reported. "Gaza in particular and Palestine in general praises Turkey's support in all domains," Al Sabah quoted Haniyeh as saying. Görmez reportedly said that the people of Gaza had free minds and free hearts despite the daily horrors they faced and the blockade on the coastal enclave.